Some politicians are saying that the current administration has made little or no progress in returning the unemployment rate to an acceptable level or to “where we were.” But what is that level? It can’t be late 2008. This is when the housing bubble burst.

It may have been many years ago when the housing bubble began raising its hidden head. I have attended several meetings conducted by well-qualified economists, where questions were asked about when the housing bubble actually began. No economist could respond even generically.

If there is no certain benchmark depicting when we were last living in a realistic economy, we then are left with this fact: The current administration has made progress in gradually turning unemployment around from when it peaked at 10 percent in October 2009 to its current level of just under 8 percent.

Joe Wasaff, Carrollton

Ask if we’re freer than before

Re: “Are you better off now than you were four years ago? — Analysis: Economy comes back, but recovery too slow for many,” Sept. 30 news story.

Your article was missing a vital question often ignored: Are we as free as we were four years ago? The Heritage Foundation now has us listed as 10th in the list of free countries, down four notches in four years. It should be unimaginable to every American patriot that we be listed as anything but first.

We the people continue to lose ground to bigger government. There are those of our so-called leaders who are actively working to transform the notion of liberty and limited government upon which this nation was founded.

Many of us feel this as a betrayal by those in government and perhaps more than the statistics alone show, this negatively affects the mood of whether we feel we are better off.